An industrialized nation, such as the United States, has a vast underground infrastructure of pipelines, conduits, wires and cables that are critical to continued functioning of the nation (hereinafter “infrastructure”). This infrastructure provides crude oil and petroleum products, natural gas, telecommunications, electricity, water, cable television, as well as other vital products and services. Disruption of any part of the infrastructure could affect public and environmental safety, as well as continued reliability of the services.
A leading cause of disruption of services (e.g., telecommunication services) is external damage to the infrastructure that occurs during excavation. The telecommunications services may include distribution of any electronic content, such a video content, audio content, and audiovisual content. A telecommunication provider (e.g., AT&T) may perform a set of internal processes to protect its network against “internal failures,” such as failed or failing network equipment and misconfigured network equipment (e.g., routers, switches, or other equipment). The telecommunication provider may also perform a set of external processes to protect against “external failures,” such as excavations by others (e.g., utility companies) that may cause damage to the telecommunication infrastructure (e.g., telecommunication cables).
Internal failures generally trigger network alarms that may result in network re-configuration and/or dispatch of maintenance technicians to correct the internal failures. In the United States, protection from external failures (e.g., excavation damage) generally involves responding to “dig tickets” generated by a national “Call Before You Dig” program. The response to a dig ticket may range from issuance of an “all clear” response that allows excavation to proceed up to dispatch of a maintenance technician who may mark a telecommunication cable location (and may remain onsite during excavation) to protect the telecommunication cable against physical damage.
The telecommunication provider may receive millions of dig tickets per year. Because of the immense volume of dig tickets, the telecommunication provider cannot exert a maximum response (e.g., technician dispatch) to each of the dig tickets, particularly as most dig tickets exhibit little to no real risk of physical damage to the telecommunication cables. To deal with the volume, the telecommunication provider computes a risk factor associated with excavation of a telecommunication cable, generally based on a type of activity associated with the dig ticket and its geographical proximity to the telecommunication cable. The computed risk factor is used to automatically process dig tickets and to select dig tickets for technician location and marking activities.